Public Talk: Meeting Room

Event Navigation

Check out Shaping San Francisco’s current Public TALKS and other public programming at ShapingSF.org.

Meeting Room shines a powerful searchlight on a controversial moment in recent Dublin history. It tells the contested story of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement from its emergence in Hardwicke St and St Teresa’s Gardens in the early 1980s to its decline with the imprisonment of some of its leaders at the end of that decade. CPAD began in response to the explosion of drug addiction in Dublin in 1982. A lack of action from the authorities meant that residents of the flats complexes where heroin was available were on their own. A mass movement was born in response and dealers were confronted with meetings, patrols, checkpoints and late night evictions. These tactics saw the movement spread throughout the city. But CPAD’s direct action strained its relationship with the authorities and the media. Charges of vigilantism and republican infiltration dogged the movement and undermined it. Hostility in the press, prosecution in the courts and a violent response from criminals was all balanced against successfully tackling the dealers as the movement rose and fell during the 1980’s in Dublin. A documentary by Jim Davis.